Mike's right about pickups, they need to suit the guitar, quite what it is I can't really put my finger on.

I think one "rule" is that fatter sounding pickups & ash bodied Strats or Teles go well together. Brighter pickups seem to work better in alder guitars.

Well, this guitar is an alder body but it actually has no strat body. It is a custom guitar that I'm building from a cheap chinese thing I purchased in Germany.

It has a Jaguar body but with strat pick ups and strat trem I'm going to replace all hardware, electronics and neck with high-end custom parts, same as I did with my japanese Tele.

The pick up set that I'm looking for must provide some 60s surf tones but they have to cover some of the classic strat sounds too. The most suitable candidate set so far is Fender CS 57/62 but Van Zandt true vintages can do both jobs.

Does anybody know what pick ups has Hank Marvin in his red strat? This is exactly the sound I want;

I got some Tonerider Classic Blues pickups for my springy and it turned it from sounding brittle and crap to wonderful (also upped the string guage which may have helped). They are about 90-95% as good as 3x as expensive boutique pups. Only ?60 for a set of 3 on ebay... highly recommended!!

For vintage sounds, and a bit of rough blues, the Us in my Springy are great - never thought of changing them.

I did swap out the Us on my Goldie to make it a bit more suitable for rock though. Red/Gold/Blue Lace Sensors and an EMG-SPC. Dirties up great, but the clean sound lacks punch and sparkle - I'll settle for it but I wouldn't recommended it!

Mike's right about pickups, they need to suit the guitar, quite what it is I can't really put my finger on.

I think one "rule" is that fatter sounding pickups & ash bodied Strats or Teles go well together. Brighter pickups seem to work better in alder guitars.

Well, this guitar is an alder body but it actually has no strat body. It is a custom guitar that I'm building from a cheap chinese thing I purchased in Germany.

It has a Jaguar body but with strat pick ups and strat trem I'm going to replace all hardware, electronics and neck with high-end custom parts, same as I did with my japanese Tele.

The pick up set that I'm looking for must provide some 60s surf tones but they have to cover some of the classic strat sounds too. The most suitable candidate set so far is Fender CS 57/62 but Van Zandt true vintages can do both jobs.

Does anybody know what pick ups has Hank Marvin in his red strat? This is exactly the sound I want;